Banned books

We recently came through "Banned Book Week". Did you have the traditional celebration where you are? The proper way to observe "Banned Book Week," of course, is to display a collection of banned books and encourage people to read them, as demonstrated by this blog entry from the Office for Intellectual Freedom. You may ask, If the books are banned, how will my local library be able to display them? This would be a very good question in my opinion. However, it seems to be a question that never occurs to anyone at the American Library Association. I subscribe to an active listserv for librarians and in all the discussion leading up to the big week, not a single person raised that most obvious question. I was tempted to give up my lurker status to address the question, but decided I had better things to do in life than deal with the flood of heated responses that would likely result from such a post on a library listserv. I'll stick to posting here and take my chances with the search engines.

Of course, the way that libraries can display "banned" books is because they aren't banned. There are no banned books in the U.S. The week's title is a misnomer. The lists used for "Banned Books Week" trace back to challenges from people who would like to see a particular book taken off the library shelf. There is no requirement that even one of those challenges be successful and result in the book being made inaccessible to anyone. The proper name for the list is "most frequently challenged books". One would think that people who worship the god of intellectual freedom would also go in for honesty, but, unfortunately, honesty has never fared well in the world of marketing and there's much marketing involved in "Banned Books Week".

We have few book challenges at the public library where I work. However, we did have one recently. A parent returned a book with the comment that it was not at all appropriate for children and did not belong in the children's area. When the report of the protest reached my desk, I was curious and decided to read the book. The title? The Fox and the Hound by Daniel P. Mannix, first published in 1967. Wikipedia says of it: "The novel's plot is extremely different from the Disney film's. It should be noted that the novel is much more complex than the Disney version and was originally intended for an adult audience." Well, yes, this book is not a happy-ending Disney story. It's a glimpse into the life of a fox and the efforts of a hound to track it down, told from the point of view of both animals in turn. There's much fox lore within its pages and I found it quite interesting. I've been compulsively sharing little tidbits from it the way other people seem compelled to tell me about television documentaries in which I have no interest.

Was it offensive and inappropriate for children? Well, that depends on your setting. Is it offensive for animals to walk around naked? Is it offensive to introduce children to the mating habits of animals and teach them correct terminology for animal anatomy? Is it offensive to include death in a story about a wild animal? I'm not sure children were sheltered from such subjects and vocabulary in 1967 like they are today. How has our society become so much less open about the sexual activities of animals and the life-and-death reality of wild animals while becoming so much more open about human sexuality in movies and television shows? I guess those shows aren't shelved in the children's section of the library.

I decided to move the book to the adult shelves even before I read the Wikipedia article saying it was intended for adults. I think it would be an excellent book for anyone wanting to learn about the life of foxes, but the reading level is better suited to teenagers or adults than the 8- to 12-year-olds who generally browse the shelves where it has sat for at least the thirteen years since the card catalog was automated.

It's too bad that people of any age have been allowed to read this book over the years. It's rather the worse for wear. I see that copies in good condition sell for $50 to $150 at Abebooks. That's unusually high for used books. Maybe we should lock it up to protect both the value of the book and the innocent minds of children who might discover it over in the adult section of the library and learn the raw truth behind such cliches as "sly as an old fox".

Things can get pretty dangerous in the public library.